In 2021, four thrill-seeking individuals could get the chance to ride aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft! The company has signed a deal with Space Adventures, a space tourism company that has already organized eight tourism trips between 2001 and 2009 to the International Space Station.
Space Adventures will organize the trip orbiting the Earth, and SpaceX will supply the vehicle and flight crew. The adventure will encompass up to five days of skyrocketing through Earth’s orbit while snuggled inside a gumdrop-shaped spacecraft that measures approximately 13-feet across.
According to Eric Anderson, chairman of Space Adventures, the flight trajectory could take the tourists farther out into space than where the International Space Station orbits. Possibly to altitudes ranging two to three times higher than the station, which would be further from Earth than anyone has gone in decades. It would offer views similar to those the astronauts had aboard NASA’s Gemini 11 mission in 1966.
There are a few steps that need to be taken before this trip can become a reality; the two main ones being to find wealthy enough passengers that can afford the flight and to get SpaceX’s Crew Dragon certified by NASA as fit to fly humans. The latter could happen in the coming weeks since the spacecraft already completed a significant testing milestone in January. The price of a ticket will be “in the range of other orbital spaceflight opportunities,” which is tens of millions of dollars.
In 2014, NASA gave Elon Musk’s hard-charging rocket venture SpaceX $2.6 billion for the development of Crew Dragon and Boeing $4.2 billion to develop its Starliner spacecraft. The space agency did so because it planned to use both companies’ spacecraft to shuttle professionally trained astronauts to the International Space Station. Commitments to NASA aside, the companies are the rightful owners of the vehicles and have the right to operate them otherwise however they see fit. Meaning, they can be used for other types of missions, such as space tourism.
However, SpaceX has talked about dispatching tourists out into space before without pulling through. In 2017, the company said it was planning on sending people on a flight around the moon aboard a Crew Dragon capsule. Still, it scrapped the idea to focus on designing a colossal spacecraft and rocket system called Starship, which is now in the early stages of development.
But maybe this time the trip will happen. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, said in a statement that:
[The company is] pleased to work with the Space Adventures’ team [on a Crew Dragon tourism trip]. This historic mission will forge a path to making spaceflight possible for all people who dream of it.
Who knows, perhaps the space industry indeed is headed for a tourism revolution!
